stare dully at the fingernail of moon that adorned the sky, trying to guess the hour. He did look so very young, I thought, although a part of me knew he was only perhaps a year or two junior to me. He switched the long spear he held from one shoulder to the other and with his free right hand he scratched at the inflamed spots on his cheek. He was close enough now, no more than two long paces away; close enough for me to strike, now that I was free of the drag of the sodden sack. And when he turned away to resume his march I told myself I would rise up and strike him down. I tensed my body, flexed my toes, hand on the dagger handle, waiting for him to move. I searched the surrounding area, eyes narrowed and roving slowly lest the slightest flash of white eyeball should attract attention; no one was stirring, the camp was silent as a stone at that hour. It was all clear. The moment he turned away, I’d be up and on him like a creeping farmyard cat on a sun-dulled dove.
But the boy remained still, half-turned towards me, and he continued to gaze like a simpleton at the moon, now picking at something stubborn inside his nose. Turn away, turn away, you dolt, I shrieked inside my head. Turn away and let this deed be done. But he stood like one of the marble statues I had seen on my Mediterranean travels, and continued to stare upwards at the star-sprinkled sky and to mine away inside his nostril.
My body was beginning to shake, not just from the cold and the wet: my pent-up muscles were demanding violent action. I wanted to move while I still had the courage to commit this murder – for foul murder it was; although the black surcoat he wore, with its blood-red chevrons across the chest, marked him as my enemy. Nevertheless, I knew in my heart that this cold killing was no better than a shameful piece of butchery, an execution – and I did not relish its accomplishment. He would not be the first man or boy that I had killed, no, not by a long summer’s day. I had killed before many times in my young life, in battle and out of it – but this felt different. And wrong. It was not only my friend Hanno who was watching me from on high; I felt that God Himself was looking down on my actions. And the Lord of Hosts was telling my conscience loud and clear that this was a mortal sin.
I knew that Robin would laugh if he could read my thoughts before this kill: he would think me soft, womanish. He would shrug and half-smile, if I were to voice my doubts about murdering this boy. And I knew exactly what he would say if he were by my side: ‘It is necessary, Alan,’ he would whisper, and then he would take the misericorde from my hand and do the deed himself – quickly, efficiently, without a moment’s pause. And never lose a wink of sleep afterwards.
Finally the boy stopped gawping at the moon, turned his back to me and took a first reluctant step up the path. I swallowed, blinked, and forced myself to rise as silently as I could from my dark corner, leaving the heavy sack in the shadows, but pulling the dagger from my boot as I did so. I kept my mind almost blank, thinking only, Now I will do this, now I will do that. And I took the first unsteady step, my foot squelching loudly in a patch of mud. I checked myself and stumbled slightly on wobbly legs, but my victim heard nothing. Suddenly my courage rose in me like a pot of water boiling over: I took three fast running steps and threw myself at his back; my left hand snaking around his head to clamp over mouth and nose and prevent him making a sound as my chest thumped into his spine. He fell forward, slamming into the turf bank at the side of the muddy track with jolting force, with me on top of him, the impact of our landing nearly causing me to drop the dagger. Nearly – but drop it I did not. He squirmed wildly under me but I got the blade of the misericorde into the right position on the back